Another Australian television network is keen to visit the Soutpansberg in the new year. They want to get to the truth of the Breaker Morant story.

In November, Britain rejected the request by Australian military lawyer Cdr Jim Unkles to pardon Morant and two Bushveldt Carbineers who had been courtmartialled in 1902 in the final throes of the Anglo Boer War. The pardon was rejected since no new primary evidence had come to light. Morant and Peter Handcock were executed before a firing squad for the murder of 12 prisoners of war.

Local historian Charles Leach and the friends of the Soutpansberg Skirmishes Route and Anglo Boer War Museum were very much involved in the visit of Cdr Unkles to South Africa at the end of March this year. Hours of filming had been done by the crew of the Nine Network and Leach’s hopes were high that the South African side of the Morant story would eventually be told to the world. According to his research, Leach found evidence that the number of murders by the BVC soldiers was not 12 but at least 34. Children had been murdered in cold blood, as well as camp attendants.

To Leach’s disappointment, the Sixty Minutes programme of Nine Network did not show too much of the true South African story. The descendants of the murdered victims were not identified as such. The image of an emaciated child in the concentration camp that was indeed shown, shook the Australian viewers to the core. Much attention was given to the petition of Unkles to get Morant pardoned.

Now an opposition channel in Australia, Seven Network, has contacted Leach.

“Our programme Sunday Night is preparing a Morant story. We are filming with Jim Unkles, but we are not filming his version of the story. That would be just another Sixty Minutes style report. I think we’re grown up enough to look at the Morant case with clear eyes now. We would be keen to come and film this in January or soon after,” Mick O’Donnell, producer of Sunday Night on Seven Netwok, said in an e-mail dated November 30.

O’Donnell added that he liked the idea of “introducing Boer descendants to … the Handcock descendants.” The descendants of Peter Handcock took part in the petition to have the convictions and sentences reviewed.

“ChanneI 7 wondered why Channel 9 supported Unkles with the petition which maybe was a failure to start with. I told Mick that my field of study is history and not military law. They want to come and see the actual historical facts. We might at last be at the turning point concerning the truth surrounding the BVC,” Leach said. He added that a provisional itinerary had been sent to Seven Network. The Soutpansberg is increasingly becoming an attraction for visitors with a military historical interest.